WAARSKU! WARNING! De-tox in progress! If you are easily offended, let what lies in shadow lie…

Swearing, cursing, deep, gutteral, heinous swearing, seems to make up the bulk of the wordage in the below 2 videos, but if you can read between the lines, you might find yourself landed with an inconvenient truth which somehow manages, paradoxically, to purify the soul rather than to soil it.

So here are 2 Afrikaner artists baring their “kak” (erm … “filth”) to the world, much in the same way that punks, alternative Afrikaners and gangsta rappers did in earlier decades. They both glory in a suburban bottom-feeder “trashier than thou” attitude, kicked into play no doubt by the likes of Eminem, and give the world an inkling of the aftermath of fascism and bankrupt repressive religiosity.

The prison boerepunk culture of Die Antwoord borders on the deeply bizarre – gothic menace meets seedy Lolitism – but they are managing to keep close touch with the underbelly of the Rainbow Nation with its buyout to corporate values, and its nouveau riche bling. To cleave so fervently to Youtube karaoke stardom and the Samurai dream – grasping at anything which hints at salvation – is indicative of a culture whose very heart has been betrayed by its former delusions of grandeur – namely Apartheid.

This is postmodernity, people, at the heart of Africa’s bottom. This is what the colonial dream is capable of producing. So as a global citizen, and a of child colonialism, (and a soutie* nogal**), let me be honest about it: Parow speaks for me. Despite that “he drinks Klipdrif brandy, and I drink Peroni, and that I have friends in Sweden and he does in Benoni”, this man and his cultural baggage reaches me.

Let’s not get romantic though, Parow and Die Antwoord will need to push on through to a new sense of self. They can’t remain forever in hedonistic “Happy Mondays” abandon or junkyard defeatism. I do not know these artists much less their hearts, but what I do know is that G-d is a friend of the truth, and that the truth has too long been repressed by the inherited cultures of modernity.

All of us need, in some way or another, to come to terms with our poisons. So rather than seeing foul mouthed trailer trash, demonic fantasies, or tattooed jailbirds, let us focus on expunging the deeper toxins of xenophobia, superiority and “purity”.

In my experience, and as problematic as it may be, the grace of the Jesus way is a convincing antidote. Jesus – friend of sinners, drunkards, the downtrodden and the losers.

Go on Jack, rhyme something with “paradigm” or “antidote”, this ones on me.

*soutie One foot in England, One foot in Africa, the third leg left dangling in the sout (salt)